Flavours of SD-WAN: What’s on offer and which work?

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We outline existing flavours of SD-WAN available on the market. Part 2 of a three-part mini-series exploring SD-WAN technology from an enterprise perspective.

Introduction

This is the second in a mini-series of three reports which seek to explore SD-WAN technology from an enterprise perspective, covering the challenges that SD-WAN is designed to address, the differing flavours of SD-WAN product on the market today, and how we envisage SD-WAN-type services evolving in future.

This report examines the role that different types of SD-WAN solutions can play in helping digital enterprises address their growing networking challenges.

SD-WAN as a solution to the networking challenges of digital enterprises

In the first report, we discussed some of these challenges. These revolve around the need to carry a growing range and volume of mission-critical, application-specific data flows – reliably and securely – across a hybrid multi-cloud, multi-domain and distributed WAN environment. This includes different types and sizes of enterprise sites, branches, campuses and remote workers served by diverse access networks on a 24/7 basis.

We highlighted seven main networking challenges that SD-WAN products and services are designed to address, as follows:

Managing the costs of WAN links

Improving control of hybrid WAN and multi-cloud environments

Assuring service and prioritising business-critical traffic

Introducing new sites and capabilities

Preventing attacks and mitigating security risks

Managing different network domains and services across the whole enterprise

In the present report, we look at SD-WAN in the context of the different flavours currently available on the market, and explore how current offers differ across several aspects:

Use of Customer Premises Equipment (dedicated appliance, uCPE or cloud?)

Networks used to deliver SD-WAN (overlay, hybrid or dedicated?)

Network topologies employed (hub and spoke, partial or full mesh?)

Security functions integrated

Extension across multiple geographies and domains

Throughout the report, we differentiate between these aspects of SD-WAN and the management requirements and features associated with them.

We also identify some of the leading vendor and service provider products and services that correspond to each of the types we discuss. This is intended for illustration and guidance only and does not constitute a recommendation.

What are the aspects of different SD-WAN deployments?

As set out in the introduction, we are differentiating in this report between aspects of SD-WAN and the management requirements and features associated with each aspect and with SD-WAN as a whole. These are:

Aspects of different SD-WAN deployments

Source: STL Partners

In the rest of this report we highlight which management elements we regard as more specific to each individual aspect.

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